


sorrows i have seen

by moreraventhanothers



Series: sorrows i have seen [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Domestic Fluff, Dreams vs. Reality, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Smut, Nightmares, Post-The Raven King, Pre-Epilogue, Swearing, Verbal Abuse, Violence, poor communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7630888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreraventhanothers/pseuds/moreraventhanothers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ronan is living a nightmare and can’t wake up.  When you don’t know up from down, it’s almost impossible to drag yourself out.</i>
</p>
<p>Depending on where you began the story, it was about a Magician and a Dreamer.  In darkened maelstrom one was swept away to drown, the other left ashore to bear it drag him down.  They weathered the storm, found their way back to one another.  It was about love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you left me in the dark

_Let the brokenness be felt, ‘til you reach the other side_

_There is goodness in the heart of every broken man_

_Who comes right up to the edge of losing everything he has_  

Adam’s eyes jolted open to a ceiling far too high to be his own.  He identified it as Monmouth’s with a measure of bewilderment before his sleep-addled mind sluggishly supplied that he was in Ronan’s room.  Another rough movement from his side swept out more of the cobwebs, confusion over what had roused him so abruptly.  He propped himself up on an elbow and turned, spreading a hand over the black lines mapping Ronan’s back.  The tremors racking his body, savage shudders that had wrenched him out of Adam’s arms and woken him, became more apparent with the contact.

“Ronan.”  Another forceful tremble. A loud, guttural moan.

Adam sat up fully.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to Ronan’s odd sleep difficulties.  Sleeping with a boy who could pull fully formed manifestations from his dreams came with some unique complications.  When Ronan was _dreaming_ , he was usually still — only the rapid flutter of his eyelids and minute muscle twitches giving him away.  He was completely paralyzed when he regained consciousness.  He’d once told Adam that he often felt trapped above his body; able to see but not act.  The explanation reminded Adam of scrying.  That was the part of Ronan’s dreaming that gave him fear — that one day he might not come back to himself, that he might dream something dangerous that would hurt him before he could defend himself, or worse, would hurt _Adam_ while he was helpless to do anything but silently witness.

Sometimes he had nightmares instead.  On these nights, the low sounds of displeasure would occasionally wake Adam before Ronan’s gasping upheaval to awareness would.  These were the times when he would gently caress his skin, whisper soft words of comfort in his ear, hold him steady and rouse him more gradually and pleasantly than the usual heart attack mimicry.  Ronan would still be a tightly wound bundle of adrenaline the moment his eyes opened, but the safety and security Adam offered would soothe him straightaway.

Ronan never thrashed in his sleep, a fact that confounded Adam with its incongruity.  Someone whose subconscious had casually offered up such unappealing monsters as the night horrors.  That fate’s unforgiving hand had dealt the lot to witness not one, but two parents dead and broken.  Who had himself nearly been dismantled molecule by molecule on the whim of a demon.  Adam thought it much more sensible that Ronan should have nightmares the way Adam did, with his whole self:  mind and body unquiet and reacting with violence.  But that just wasn’t Ronan’s way.  He wasn’t subtle about many things in his life, but active nightmaring was one of them.

Ronan rolled toward the wall, curling into himself with a motion that articulated suffering.  “Ronan.”  He reached out, pulling at the boy until his back was flush against the mattress.  Adam shifted closer, placing a hand on each shoulder, and jostled him.  “Ronan, wake up.  You’re freaking me out.”

Ever the stubborn portrait of contrariness, Ronan did not wake. Instead, the quivering solidified into the full-body spasms of a seizure.  “What the—” Adam drew back in horror before redoubling his efforts at waking him.  “Ronan!” he yelled, no longer sparing any concern about disturbing the other occupants of the factory.  Chainsaw’s perturbed squawk blared short and sharp, before she cawed in real distress.  The bird dismounted, circling above Ronan’s unconscious form twice before landing back on the perch, still flapping and screeching.  Adam could empathize.  “Ronan, goddamn it.”  He wasn’t responding to Adam’s increasingly harsh shaking or rising voice.  Adam had climbed halfway on top of him, straddling his hips to keep him from convulsing himself into the floor.

Ronan’s breath escaped in short pants, the echo of which had been permanently etched into Adam’s memory.  Deprived of sight and motion, his sense of hearing had been unfairly augmented when he’d had to listen to the noises of the demon attempting to unmake him.  The boy he’d realized only hours before that he loved.  The sound often took a leading role in Adam’s own nightmares, and hearing such gasping repeated now made his heart forget its rhythm.

“Ronan!  Wake up!  Shit,” Adam breathed.  “Shit!  Come on, you have to wake up.  Please.”

“Adam?  What—” Gansey’s voice came from the vicinity of the door, before its owner parsed the scene and strode to the side of the bed.  “What’s happening?  What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know!  He never does this.  He woke me up shaking and pulling away.  I tried to wake him up.  When he has nightmares, I can always… he wakes up.  He wakes up.”  Apprehension formed a stony wall in his chest.  “Shit, he doesn’t…  He doesn’t do this, Gansey!  This isn’t right and he won’t wake up and I’m terrified he’s not going to.  _Ronan_!”

“I’ll call 911.  What else... what can we do?”

Adam was sure he resembled a feral animal when he turned to his friend.  Chainsaw was still shrieking; Ronan was still quaking.  “Water. Get cold water,” he forced the words past the lump in his throat.  He had no idea if it would help, but water had protected him from evil’s influence once before, and if nothing else, maybe it would shock Ronan awake.  Gansey, glad for a task to accomplish, hurried from the room. 

Adam stroked Ronan’s face, running his thumb along the harsh lines created by the tension seizing Ronan’s muscles.  A line of blood leaked from one of his nostrils.  It was mercifully red, contrasting with Adam’s piercing dread, memories of black blood and poisonous corruption.  But that did nothing to console the other horrors frantically running laps in Adam’s thoughts.  A ragged sound escaped him.  “Please, Ronan.  Don’t… don’t do this.”  He leaned forward.  Placed a single kiss on his tightly strained mouth.  “Wake up.  I know you can do it.  You can beat whatever this is.  Just wake up.”

The crashing of Gansey’s footsteps pulled him back.  “Here,” he murmured, offering up an overlarge bucket filled to the brim, sloshing water on the floor.  No one could accuse Gansey of acting in half-measures.  Adam scrambled off the bed, snatching it in both hands and unceremoniously soaking Ronan, his bed, the walls, the floor, and his own clothes in the process of overturning it.  Ronan’s vehement tremors quieted to shivers and the gasps stopped altogether.

“Shit,” Adam hissed.  He shot forward, placing two fingers against the underside of Ronan’s jaw.  His pulse was a thin and reedy thing, weak in a way Ronan never was.  “Oh God — _Ronan_.”  Adam’s own pulse was a rocket, blasting off.  Panic shriveled his lungs.  He turned halfway toward Gansey.  “Did you call?”

He nodded, his face a picture of impotent concern.  “They’re on their way.”

“I don’t even…  I don’t know if they can help.  Whatever this is.”  One of his hands came down on Ronan’s chest in a fist.  “What the hell is this?” he whispered.


	2. slip and fail to breathe

The forest was dark and muted around him.  Ronan spun, observing the silent trees.  The color of the world around him was askew, like someone had lowered the contrast and saturation settings on the display of reality.  Was he dreaming?  It didn’t feel like it usually did when he showed up in the forest.  Typically, he’d materialize here during his Greywaren dreams, skating the knife’s edge of awareness and sleep that would enable him to bring something back if he wanted it hard enough.  No, this wasn’t that.  He didn’t have the dim phantom knowledge of his true body sleeping somewhere else.  But this wasn’t the illusory haze of an ordinary dream either.  Was this real?

He walked forward, the sounds of grass softly crackling under his shoes and the mild rush of wind his only companions.  As he approached a clearing, he could make out the burbles of running water.  A familiar figure lounged on the grass alongside a slowly moving river, staring out across it.  His heart surged.  “Parrish?  What are you doing here?”

Adam’s gaze did not shift.  “You brought me here,” he sighed. “Like you always do.”

Confusion prickled across Ronan’s skin.  “What do you mean?  Is this a dream?  If it is, it feels… wrong.”

“Isn’t that the way things always are with you?”  Adam’s voice was resigned.

Ronan’s brow furrowed.  The sound of a stick snapping behind him made him spin.  When he turned back, Adam was gone.  “Adam?”

 _Clear your mind of whimsy_.  The echo of his father’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.  “Parrish, you still here?”

“You won’t let me go.”  His voice sounded similarly close and far.  The boy himself was nowhere to be seen.  Goosebumps raced up his arms.

“And why would I do that?”

“I’m leaving this state.”

A sense of déjà vu struck Ronan unpleasantly.  “I know that.  I’m not asking you to stay for me.”

“Aren’t you?”  The wind’s strength ratcheted up several notches, lifting leaves around him.  “Don’t you even know what you are?”

 _Dreams are easily broken_.  The voice sounded familiar, but Ronan couldn’t immediately place it.  It continued, “So eager to keep failing.  Have you figured it out yet?  What it is that makes you think you’re not going to end up dead like your father?”

“I’m not my father.”  Ronan spun, searching for the speaker.  Not finding him.  “Who are you?  Where are you?  Where’s Parrish?”

“You may not be your father, but you’re certainly not going to end up any better off than he did.  You keep trying.  Keep snatching.  Reaching for light.  Failing.  You fail everyone you’ve ever met, Ronan.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Exhibit A:  The father.”  Niall Lynch’s corpse manifested in front of Ronan, just how he remembered it.  A mess of red and pink and white and gore.  He couldn’t look away.  “Dead.  The Gray Man painted his brains across the concrete with a tire iron while you slept only rooms away.  You failed him.  Can’t argue with that.”

Ronan finally dragged up the willpower to turn away, feeling every bit like he was going to be sick.

“Exhibit B:  The brother.”  Declan appeared next, a third eye seeping blood in his forehead.  “He’s always tried to protect you, even though you’ve hated him for so long.  You and your father.  Dreamers.  Weapons.  All you are is an instrument in the destruction of anyone ignorant enough to care for you.  He will get killed trying to walk the line between your father’s business and your secrets.  Failed.”

“Stop,” Ronan choked.  “That isn’t true.”

The voice did not stop.  “Exhibit C,” it continued.  “The mother.”

“No,” Ronan moaned, screwing his eyes tightly shut.  Out of all the memories, all the nightmares he had collected over the years, that was one thing he knew he could not bear to see again.

“Also dead.  Your father failed her the moment he created her.  He failed her again when he got himself killed.  You started failing her the moment you thought being back in her life would lead to anything but devastation.  You just had to interfere.  You took her to Cabeswater.  You delivered her straight into the demon’s hands.  You didn’t take her to safety even after you witnessed the corruption.  You perhaps failed _her_ most of all.”  A hand roughly clenched Ronan’s chin.  The voice lost its composed, lecturing tone and morphed into an angry hiss.  “Open your damn eyes, Ronan.  This is your failure.  The least you could do is bear witness to it.”  It let go.

Ronan’s eyes opened against his will.  There was no censorious male presence in front of him, but the ruined remnants of his mother stained the grass a few feet away.  He dropped his knees and loosed the contents of his stomach over the course of several heaves.  When he was done, trembling, abdomen and throat aching, eyes closed and panting, the voice continued to speak softly.  “You know, that’s another way you failed Declan.  You let your petty conflict and secrets keep you from telling him your mother was awake and aware inside your dreamt forest.  He never got a chance to see her again before you got her killed.  You’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

Ronan wiped his mouth on his arm.  Was this a dream?  Was it real?  Was this hell?  Was he dead?  _Wake up._   The command felt improper.  There was no shift in awareness, no weighty realization that he could, in fact, leave this behind.  This did not feel like a dream.

“Oh well.  Shall we continue?  Exhibit D?”  He struggled to pull himself to his feet.  Mercifully, when he opened his eyes, the bodies and gore and vomit had vanished.  Matthew lay there, peaceful and still, in their place.  _Non mortem, somni fratrem_.  Chainsaw and Opal were suddenly beside him, or perhaps had always been beside him, in an identical state.  “The dreamed.  Again, you failed them the moment you thought bringing them into a world with you in it was a good idea.  Because then you were responsible for them.  So much big talk about how you were going to dream something to wake the dreams.  How unfortunate that fell by the wayside to tend your own selfish desires.  When you die, their lives will end with you.  Three more failures added to your ever-growing list.”

“Fuck you,” Ronan growled.

“Exhibit E:  The best friend.”

“Fuck you,” Ronan repeated.  “We saved Gansey.”

The voice hummed impatiently.  “Evidence suggests he likely would not have needed saving if he hadn’t met you.  You were the reason he was so eager to make the sacrifice.  Pesky dreamer, getting himself unmade.  So willing to let others be collateral damage.”

“I didn’t ask him for anything!”

“Of course not, Ronan.  You never _asked_.”  It was Gansey that answered.  Ronan pivoted, and there he was.  “You always simply expected.  Demanded.  Felt entitled to.  Do you realize how much trouble you were?  How many problems you caused?  What lengths I had to go to to keep you alive, to keep you out of trouble, to keep you in school?”  He slowly approached, face morphing into an expression of distaste.  “I gave and gave and you took and took.  You never cared.  And I could never walk away.  Jesus, Ronan, I bribed the headmaster with Monmouth to get you a diploma and you dropped out.  The only reason we still have it is because Helen found out, and she’s ruthless.”

Ronan’s stomach dropped to his feet.  “You never—”

“What, I never told you?  Would it have made a difference?  When had it ever once made a difference?  Sacrificing myself to keep the demon from destroying you was the next logical step in a long line of atrocious decisions made for your sake.  When I had nothing left to give for you, I offered my life.  I don’t count it as a personal favor that you found a way to return it to me.  I never should have had to give it.”

This was wrong.  All of this was so wrong.  He was going to be sick again.  “Gansey,” he pleaded.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t been able to stitch you back together.  You’ve held me back for so long.  What could I have become without you?”

Ronan’s head dropped into his hands.  Behind his eyes, his pulse danced with the tears pressing against his lids.  He couldn’t speak.  He couldn’t breathe. 

_Worthless._

No, this couldn’t be real.  This was too wrong.  Too much.  _Wake up._

_Wake.  Up._

Footsteps rustled behind him.  He didn’t want to look.  He didn’t want to know what new horrors awaited him on the other side of his eyelids.  A familiar touch cradled the back of one of Ronan’s hands.  “Ronan?  What are you doing here?”  He lowered his arms, but desperately gripped Adam’s hand, not willing to surrender the grounding contact.  Adam looked real.  He looked right.  His eyes inspected Ronan’s wrecked expression with the concern he would have expected.  His gaze trailed over the clearing, abandoned except for the two of them, with an appropriate amount of confusion.  “What is this?” 

An unpleasant sound escaped Ronan.  “I don’t know, man.”

“Are you okay?  You look like shit.”

A fraction of Ronan’s mouth quirked upward.  The angle felt wrong.  “Thanks, Parrish.”

“Seriously, asshole.  You okay?”

A jagged breath carved past his lips.  Adam’s other hand clutched his cheek in response.  Ronan pressed into the touch gratefully.  “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Adam pulled away, withdrawing and disentangling his hands from Ronan’s skin.  He shivered at the loss of contact before Adam pushed forward, wrapping his arms around him firmly.  He folded his arms across Adam’s lower back and tucked his head into his shoulder.  “I thought you knew when you were awake and when you were asleep.”

Ronan’s terse chuckle was bitter.  “So did I.”  He gingerly nuzzled the side of Adam’s face with his own.

“Hey.”  Adam’s hand roamed the planes of his back soothingly.  “I’m here.  You’re okay.”

They stood like that for a span of several moments, Ronan regaining a measure of stability from Adam’s steady presence, before his thoughts intruded again.

This time they arrived in the form of Blue’s voice.  “He’ll never love you, you know.  Not really.  Not like you want him to.  Not like you do him.”  Ronan tensed.  Adam didn’t seem to notice the movement or the sound.  Ronan levelled a heavy glare at Blue over his shoulder.  “What?  Don’t look at me like that.  He doesn’t know how.  All he knows is hardship and hiding, violence and survival.  He’s never had anyone to love him, to teach him how.”

She quirked an eyebrow.  “And you?  You’re a Molotov ready to burn.  You really think flames and fists, armor and anger, sarcasm and spite are the way to open him up?”  Her head shook ruefully.  “To flay him alive, maybe.”

Ronan’s grip tightened.  “I’m not like that with him.”  Adam remained oblivious, seemingly frozen in the moment of their embrace.

Blue ignored him.  “And even if by some miracle you manage not to destroy each other before he goes, he _is leaving_.  You can’t ask him to stay.  You know all he’s ever wanted is his freedom.  To escape from this place.”

“I know that, Sargent,” he whispered harshly.

“He won’t stay for you.  He is going to leave.  And he’s not going to come back.”  Her voice lowered.  “You’re not enough to make him come back.  Hell, you’re such a shitbag, you’ll probably drive him away yourself.” 

“Enough.” 

“Let him go.”

Adam finally shifted in his arms, though not to acknowledge Blue or Ronan’s snarled replies.  He pulled his head back, running his cheek along Ronan’s before capturing his lips with his own.  Ronan sank into the kiss without resistance.  The emotional whiplash was reaching dizzying heights.  He still had no idea where he was, what this was, what was real and what was not.  He allowed himself the attempt at drawing some answers from Adam’s warm mouth.  His lips were slightly chapped and soft and demanding as they always were.  _He_ , at least, felt so true.

“He’ll find some nice guy or girl at college and never look back.”  Ronan’s fingers clenched against Adam’s shirt.  “You are not enough.  You never will be, you worthless bastard.  You are hatred and destruction and everything that’s left when you burn all the good out of the world.”

He wasn’t sure which happened first, his pained intake of breath or Adam’s palms on his chest savagely shoving him away.  “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed.

Ronan’s fingers automatically traveled to his mouth.  His lower lip was bleeding — a consequence of someone’s teeth when he was knocked away with their mouths still attached.  His eyes flicked up from his red-stained fingertips.  “What?”  The incredulous word was the only one he could grasp.

“I told you no.”

“Parrish, what the fuck?”

“Just let me go, goddamn it.  I told you I couldn’t — wouldn’t do this shit anymore.  I am leaving.  You are not coming with me.  I am not going to waste my time on this.  On you.”

“What?”  Ronan felt like a broken record.  That was fitting, his mind seemed to be skipping the important parts of the tracks anyway.

“Fucking hell, Lynch!”  Ronan blinked.  Adam was resentment wrapped in rage, visibly fuming.

A blink.  Kavinsky was on his knees in front of him, his entire body a malicious smirk.  His fingers curled suggestively around Ronan’s waistband.  “I know what you are,” his hot breath puffed against Ronan’s stomach.  He recoiled, but Kavinsky held fast.  “I was the only one you’d ever actually deserve, Lynch.  Too bad that wasn’t enough, right man?  This is just _your_ nightmare now.”

Another blink.  Adam’s hands were wrapped around his neck.  Reflex drove him to snatch at Adam’s wrists but the surprise wore off before he unintentionally applied enough force to harm.  He would not hurt Adam; that much had not changed.  Ronan stumbled backward, trying to escape without direct physical retaliation.  The pressure did not loosen, the ice in his blue eyes did not thaw.  His foot met with an unexpected shift in terrain and they both went down, hard.  The remaining breath in Ronan’s lungs escaped in a whoosh.  The shooting pain riding along his back and ribs distracted him for a mere moment before the black and red explosions accompanying his brain begging for oxygen overrode it. 

“This is your fault.  There’s no one else to blame.  Just you and your fucking dream forest,” he spat.  “You knew.  You knew it was yours and you let me sacrifice myself to it.  To you!  You opened me up to those forces, to that demon.  You let me get possessed.  You let me lose my free will.  Goddamn it, Lynch, you knew me.  You knew that was the only thing that ever mattered.”  His grip tightened.  Ronan’s eyes were going to explode out of his head.  He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears, his eyes, his teeth.  His thoughts were slowing to a lethargic crawl.  Blackness was eating away at the edges of his vision.  His hips bucked ineffectually against Adam’s.  “And for what?  Because Cabeswater loved you, you thought I would?”

Blink.  No hands around his neck.  Inhale.  Mistake.  Two lungs full of water and a fist holding the back of his head in place.  Involuntary convulsions rocked him until the pressure lessened.  He exploded from the river, rocking back on his knees.  His violent coughs felt like they ejected more from him than the water in his lungs.  He collapsed onto his back, ragged breaths a serrated knife’s edge scraping his pulmonary system from the inside out.

Blink.  Adam hovered above him, face devoid of all emotion.

Blink.  Actual knife driving into his gut.  Skin, tendons, muscles, tissue tearing.  The pain warred with his other injuries for dominance — throat, head, back, ribs, lungs, chest — and he let out a grunt that was more of a moan than anything else.  His eyes tripped down his front to see the large blade protruding from his torso.  Adam’s elegant hand draped around the hilt.  Its grip tightened, shifted.  Twisted suddenly.  Ronan’s scream was a feeble, miserable thing.  His eyes slipped closed.

When they opened again, Adam had wrenched the knife free.  The inexorable truth struck Ronan — _Adam Parrish was going to kill him_.  Warmth swelled over him, spreading, biting back against the chill from the cold, merciless water.  He was already losing so much.  How much blood was wrapped up in one human?  How did it escape so readily?  _Matthew_. Inexplicable knowledge sluggishly filtered in:  that if he died here, he would never make it back.  _Opal._ The knife in Adam’s hand was rising.  _Please._   The other hand wrapping around it, steadying his aim.  _Please._ Straight above his heart.  _Please._   Coming down.  _Wakeupwakeupwakeu_ —


	3. ‘til the sirens sound

 

“His eyes are open!”  Adam’s attention snapped to Ronan’s face quickly enough to induce whiplash.  Gansey rushed forward, crowding him at the head of the bed.  Adam’s heart thundered with hope. 

“Ronan?”  No response.  The hope dimmed.  He leaned forward, gently tilting Ronan’s face toward him.  Gansey was right, his eyes _were_ open.  But they were… dead.  He was looking at nothing, pupils blown out and still.  One of the blood vessels in his right eye had ruptured, the corner stained crimson.  Tiny plum-colored specks dotted the skin surrounding his eyes, dipping onto his cheeks.  Adam passed a hand through his empty stare, and was not granted so much as a twitch in return.

Gansey pressed closer.  “Perhaps…  Didn’t one of you say that he couldn’t move after he—”

Ronan exploded into awareness with a gasp that sounded like it had everything to do with dying.  It was as jagged and brittle as broken glass, and Adam was sure at that moment that it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.  “Thank God,” he forcefully sighed.

At that, Ronan’s eyes finally met his.  They gradually suffused with something Adam could not gauge the measure of before Ronan was bodily flinging himself from the bed and into the far corner of the room.  Chainsaw squawked loudly and swooped onto the floor beside him.

“Ronan?”  Gansey’s bewilderment was plain in the question.

 _Fear_ , his brain supplied.  Ronan was terrified.  It was written in his posture, in the curl of his body into itself.  “Ronan,” Adam whispered.  He approached him gingerly, with an openness and care typically reserved for frightened animals.  Adam held his gaze until Ronan hastily dropped his eyes with a violent shiver.  He looked like one.  What could have possibly had this effect on _Ronan Lynch_?  Why was he so afraid?

As he neared, Adam allowed himself to inspect Ronan more thoroughly.  The speckling around his eyes was still visible, made more so by the deep flush of Ronan’s cheeks.  The blood from his nostril had mostly been washed away by the water still clinging to his pale skin.  His lip was split open in such a way that had Adam thinking of teeth.  Several dark marks were purpling across the expanse of his throat.  Adam belatedly realized why every one of Ronan’s heaving breaths sounded so agonizing.  “Oh God.”  He collapsed to his knees beside him.  The boy’s flinched response would have been appropriate, if Adam had decided to punch him.  Ronan pressed his arms impossibly tighter around his midsection and wouldn’t look at him.  Throwing caution to the wind, Adam reached and fought for one of his hands.  Ronan resisted him more than he thought strictly necessary.  Further truth crushed its way into Adam.  Ronan wasn’t just afraid, he was afraid of _him_.

“Ro—” Adam started before his thoughts stuttered.  He couldn’t process what he was seeing.  Chainsaw hopped along the floor in his peripheral vision.  Ronan’s entire hand was red.  And most of the inside of his arm.  Terror was a caustic poison inside Adam’s veins.  He shoved Ronan’s knees down with a roughness born of urgency.  Ignored the single word of protest that sounded more like the scrape of gravel than a voice.  Seized each of Ronan’s arms and thrust them away.  There was so much of it.  It seemed impossible that he hadn’t noticed before.  “Oh God.”  His eyes flicked up to Ronan’s.  “Oh my God.  What did you do?  What the _hell did you do_?”  He felt like he had swallowed battery acid.  He wanted to crawl out of his own skin.  He wanted to wrap himself around Ronan and apologize for his failure in not being able to wake him before _this_ happened.  He wanted to go back in time.  He wanted to cry until he ran out of tears.  He was already well on his way.

“Gansey.”  He didn’t recognize the timbre of his own voice.  “God, Gansey get some shirts, a towel, I don’t… something.  Just get something!”  A wad of Ronan’s shirts was shoved into his hand posthaste.  An unfamiliar sound grated in his ear.  He shoved the fabric against the skin of Ronan’s abdomen with enough pressure to knock him into the wall.  It seemed impossible that it could do anything to hold him together.

“The paramedics are already on their way, Adam.  He will make it through this.  He will.”  Gansey, though clearly shaken, sounded so sure.

Probably that was supposed to make him feel better.  Ronan in a pool of his own blood was not a novel sight for Gansey, after all.  Adam couldn’t take his eyes off Ronan.  He was not convinced.  There was already so much.  He didn’t see how that much blood could end up on the outside of a person and them come out the other side alive.  He was suddenly aware that the noise rending the air was coming from his own throat.  One of Ronan’s scarlet hands cradled his cheek for a moment before dropping limply back to his side.  Adam saw more than heard the “I’m sorry” on Ronan’s lips before his head lolled forward.

Adam was there to catch him.  He shifted, pulling the limp boy into his lap, one arm crossed over Ronan’s shoulders, holding his head to the crook of his neck.  The other desperately pushed to keep him whole.  He fell back against the wall.  The steady pressure made him conscious of how fiercely he was shaking.  “No.”  He couldn’t get enough air.  “God, Ronan.  No.  You can’t do this.”  A pained sound that didn’t translate to words.  “You can’t do this, damn it.  You’ve got…  You’ve got to wake up, Ronan.  You have to pull through this.”  Two more deep gasps that did nothing to pacify the constricting in his lungs.  “Please.”

“Adam,” Gansey whispered brokenly.  It sounded like a plea.  What could Gansey be asking him for?  To get it together?  Every fiber of his being was shredding itself into mangled fragments.  To stop overreacting?  How long had Ronan been bleeding out?  The moments were stretching long into eternity.  Why did it feel like hours had passed since Adam had learned he was watching Ronan die?

Several knocks rattled the front door.  Cautiously restrained relief stirred in his gut.  At least there was a chance now.  The analytical half of his brain caught up.  “What are we going to tell them?” he croaked.

Gansey stopped in his tracks.  He contemplated for less than a full second before he shook his head and kept moving.  “I’ll take care of it.”

Adam assumed that meant the Gansey family solution, that gratuitous amounts of money would be involved.  He found that in this instance, he did not care in the least.  He wondered if bribery worked on medical professionals.  He figured everyone had their price.  He reckoned Gansey was capable of meeting it.

Time ran unevenly.  Details surfaced and fled.  Two youngish paramedics entered Ronan’s room.  In the spare moments before professionalism trumped instinct, Adam saw the questions they wanted to ask rise in their faces.  The shorter one was clearly distressed by the bizarre circumstances of Ronan’s emergency — the drenched bed, the bucket, the blood trail, Adam pressing Ronan close, the impossible puddle of blood surrounding them.  The taller one was fleetingly possessed with a childlike curiosity regarding the random assortment of expensive and dreamt shit in his room, and the raven rapidly departing through the open door.

Time juddered.  The stretcher suddenly in the room.  Two men trying to take Ronan from his arms to load him onto it.  Adam, irrationally unable to let him go.  Ronan on the board, being strapped down.  Adam, shivering in Ronan’s blood.  Gansey, saying his name over and over.  Gansey yanking him to his feet and taking his head in both hands to get him to look at him.  “Do you want to go with him?”  Adam, blinking stupidly several times.  “Adam!”

Adam’s eyes finally focused.  Gansey seemed to sense it and repeated his question.  “Are you going in the ambulance?”  A long shiver ran down Adam’s spine.

“You go with him.  I can’t...”  He looked at himself for the first time.  Crimson stained him nearly head to toe.  His trembling intensified.  “I can’t deal with this.  I’ll wash off real quick and grab some stuff.  I’ll take the BMW.  I’ll be right behind you.  Take care of him.”

Gansey nodded somberly and pressed a comforting hand to his shoulder.  “Be careful, Adam,” he urged before rushing to join the paramedics.

The slam of the front door was the last sound Adam was cognizant of hearing.  Forcing his muscles to cooperate to move him forward was a battle he almost didn’t win.  He felt emptied of everything important, everything that functioned to make him Adam.  He hollowly shuffled to the shower and turned it on to a temperature he could not feel.  He stood in the stream for several indeterminate moments before he realized he was still wearing his clothing.  He stripped off and tried again.

He stood in the middle of Ronan’s room in a towel, shivering violently.  He could not be sure whether it was purely from shock and grief or if he had accidentally subjected himself to an icy shower as well.  He edged toward the dresser, opening the drawer where Ronan had encouraged him to keep spare clothing and some odds and ends.  He very pointedly tried to ignore the slick of blood darkening on the floor as he dressed and grabbed Ronan’s phone and keys.  His abdominal muscles clenched dangerously when he failed.  A long minute passed contemplating whether or not his body was going to vomit.

It decided not to.  His mind tripped over itself as he numbly made his way down the stairs.  _He was terrified.  He was terrified of me.  He was terrified.  He was terrified of me.  Terrified.  Of me.  Me_.  Buckling the seatbelt, starting the engine.  It finally connected.  _Me.  It was_ me _._ I _did this to him._ Adam rested his head on the steering wheel for a protracted period before he could see through the tears brimming his eyes well enough to drive.

His hands were shaking so much he could barely shift the car into gear.  He had to make a conscious effort to keep his shuddering leg from mashing the gas pedal too forcefully.  Then he remembered that Ronan was probably dying somewhere and decided speed limits were trivial.  The engine growled below him agreeably.  He saw the lights of the ambulance on the clear road ahead of him far too soon.  An unsteady hand picked up Ronan’s phone and dialed Gansey.

“Adam?”

“Why am I right behind you?”

He heard the sounds of Gansey shifting, perhaps turning to look in the rearview mirror.  Then he let out a reluctant sigh.  “We weren’t able to leave right away.  He… his heart stopped.”  There was a reeling moment in which Adam was sure he was going to lose control of the BMW.  “They got him back,” Gansey quickly continued.  The moment passed.  “They were able to resuscitate him.  We will make it to the hospital.  They will help him.  He will be okay, Adam.  Keep breathing.”

The sound of his breathing was in fact the only response he could manage.  The phone began to vibrate against his ear.  Dread pumped heavy through his heart.  “Declan’s calling,” Adam murmured to Gansey before he hung up.

“Ronan?” Declan demanded as soon as the call connected.

“It’s Adam.”

“Where’s Ronan?”  His tone was proper concern tempered with habitual annoyance.  “Matthew woke me in the middle of the night.  Said he felt terrible, but couldn’t explain it.  He was acting strange.  Then he just fucking collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut.”

“He okay?”

“He’s awake.  Still not right.  We’re heading down there right now.  Adam, where is Ronan?  Did something happen?”

“Ambulance.  I—” his voice cracked and failed him.  “Gansey said his heart stopped.  I don’t know if the bleeding stopped in time.”  It took an unreasonable length of time for him to swallow past the lump in his throat.

“Drive faster, Declan.”


	4. something keeping its weight on me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I think Adam's perspective in this chapter is important, I have now written (some of) it from his point of view. If that interests you, check it out here: [miles from where you are / burning to the ground](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9232208)
> 
> (I recommend reading it before this one for maximum impact)

_The room is too white._   The observation surfaced lazily through a leaden haze of oblivion.  A languid blink, and there was Adam — curled into a nearby vinyl monstrosity, idly playing with his phone.  Happiness bloomed within Ronan.  Flashes of _vitriol-teeth-hands-water-blades_ lashed through him to strike it down.  He shut his eyes tight, reopened them.  It was easier to confine the poisonous visions to a corner of his mind with the real thing lounging in view.

“Adam,” he spoke, but the word came out wrong.  It was whisper-weak, too gravelly.  Adam’s eyes snapped to his all the same.  Immense relief flooded them before something else intruded.  His eyes dropped and he did not speak a word until he finished hastily poking at Ronan’s phone and placed it on the chair arm.

He unfolded and looked back to Ronan, expression grave.  “How do you feel?  Do you remember anything?”

How did he feel?  Ronan took stock of himself.  The answer was a sound _like shit_.  He told Adam as much before he glanced around and realized just _how_ shit things actually were.

The room was indeed too white, the bleached monochrome of a sterile medical facility.  He was propped up in a hospital bed.  A sick feeling of disquiet rose up within him.  Both his hands rested atop a scratchy blanket.  One had been made the brand new home of an IV line.  His head ached.  His throat was palpably sore.  The motion of swallowing stung.  No wonder he could barely talk.  Breathing kind of hurt, too.  Something in his abdomen – his muscles or ribs.  He could feel his pulse in his gut.

The foreboding surged into full-fledged alarm.  His free hand instinctively retreated to his middle and grazed the bandages firmly wrapped around him.  “Oh no,” he rasped.  “Shit.”  His head slammed back against the uncomfortable pillow.  How could this have happened?  He hadn't thought it possible to bring something back like _this_.  Not when he hadn't truly known whether he’d been dreaming.  “Shit.  _Fuck_.  I fucked up.  God.  I didn’t mean to.”

“Ronan?”  His younger brother was suddenly in the doorway, with Gansey and Declan at his heels.  Matthew darted forward, draping himself around Ronan in a careful hug.  “We were super worried about you!”  Ronan held him tight.  How had he failed so tremendously?  How had he let this come back with him?  How could he have endangered Matthew like that?  _You fail everyone you’ve ever met_.  A shiver racked its way down his spine.  “Are you okay?”

He didn’t lie, so he answered, “I’m alive.”  Matthew withdrew, but didn’t go far, parking himself on the foot of the bed.  Ronan shifted his legs to give him room, grunting with discomfort.

“What happened?” Declan asked, insistence mitigated by a surprising tenderness.  Ronan still wasn’t used to reasonable tones coming out of Declan’s mouth and being directed at him.  He and Gansey stood near the end of the bed, expressions awash with anticipation, waiting for answers.  Adam sat stiffly against the back of the chair, quietly observing him.  His earlier attention to the phone made sense now – he’d been texting Declan and Gansey that Ronan was awake.  What did _not_ make sense was his impassivity.  Ronan’s chest thrummed uneasily.

He dragged both palms down his face.  Exhaled with extreme force.  “Nightmare.  I guess.  Well, no.  Shit.  I know it was a nightmare.  I didn’t know it was a dream.”  _Real logical, Lynch_.  Any minute Gansey, in that misbehaving toddler voice of his, would tell him to start making more sense.  “It felt wrong.  I couldn’t wake up.  I didn’t think I was able to, period.  I had tried to, before…  Before things got really bad.  Didn’t work.”  Ronan huffed a sound of loud frustration.  It scraped raw against the soreness in his chest and throat.  Words were completely failing him.  How the fuck was he supposed to explain something he couldn’t even grasp himself?

“I don’t know, man.  Fuck.  I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.  Definitely don’t understand how I brought it back with me.  It wasn’t— it wasn’t one of those dreams.  I didn’t feel like I was dreaming.  And for it to work, I have to know.  I have to want.  And I didn’t want…  Shit, I didn’t want any of it.  All I wanted…  I needed to wake up before it killed me.  If I died there, I think I knew I wouldn’t make it back, so I _wanted_ that.  All I wanted was to wake up.”  A hard, bitter laugh shot out of him with the force of a cannon.  “Apparently I just have a talent for fucking things up beyond repair.” 

Everyone was quiet.  Ronan couldn’t stand it.  He wanted to break something.  He wanted Adam to touch him.  Why was he so far away?  “How long was I out?”

“A day and a half,” Gansey supplied. 

Ronan took that in for a moment and hated himself a little more.  “Has anyone checked on Opal?”  He turned to Adam expectantly, sure that he would have thought about her, too.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” he said mechanically.  Ronan’s floundering stomach didn’t know what to do.  The flat declaration meant that Adam had apparently been worried enough about Ronan to not leave his side.  That he had missed multiple school days and work shifts on Ronan’s account.  But it also meant that Opal had been alone for two days, probably scared and wondering what had happened to him.  “I asked Gansey and Blue to go the Barns to check on her.”  He fractionally relaxed.

“I went too,” Matthew added with excitement.  His innocent grin hurt to look at.  Something inside Ronan was a clenched fist.  _I almost killed them_.  _I almost—_   “She was okay.”  The pressure lessened.

Gansey filled in the details.  “Chainsaw was there with her.  She must have gone straight to her when she flew out during the chaos at Monmouth.”  Ronan hummed thoughtfully.  It was a comforting revelation, that his dreams were prone to caring for one another.  “Opal was completely fine.  She was playing in one of the barns.  Chainsaw was a little battered.”

His heart twisted unpleasantly in his chest.  “What?”

“She must have dropped the first time your heart stopped, like—” his eyes darted to Matthew.  _The first time._ Ronan’s heart had apparently decided that climbing into his throat was also an appropriate activity.  “She’s mostly well.  Really,” Gansey barreled on.  “She must have flown low the rest of the way.  It appeared she’d only had one rather bad fall.  She will be good as new in no time.”

_The_ first _time._ Only _one bad fall._ “How—” he choked on the words.  His pulse throbbed in his ears.  He was back underwater.  Flares of a shredding pulse carrying no oxygen, brain begging, breathing in only water that may well have been fire clawed through him.  Muscles wrenched against bones and skin.  He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.  The serrated inhalation he snagged was too shallow.  He had not recognized just how grievous his fuck-up genuinely was.  _Worthless_.  “How many times did my heart stop, exactly?”

Adam’s detached voice supplied the answer.  “Three.”

“They got you back almost immediately each time,” Gansey hastened to add.

A wildly tasteless thought raced across his mind.  _Well, that explains the ribs._   Ronan’s eyes drifted from Adam to Declan to Matthew.  White-hot misery obliterated everything inside of Ronan.  He was a hollow shell of a boy.  The ashes left after a conflagration.  _I should be fucking dead._ “Jesus,” he exhaled, “Christ.  Jesus.  I’m so sorry.”  An apology from Ronan Lynch was a rare thing, but this situation certainly seemed to merit it.  The occupants of the room took his words for what they were with solemn acceptance.  They knew — _he hoped they knew_ — that this had been the furthest thing from intentional, but he damn sure regretted that it’d happened.

It was Gansey that broke the uncomfortable silence.  “Do you remember anything?”  That damn question again.  Why was it so important whether Ronan could remember anything before this?  Wasn’t _this_ the part that mattered?  The part where Ronan learned he’d come within a hairsbreadth of killing himself and half his remaining family?  Where Ronan recognized his mind was a weapon.   That it was dangerous not only in dreams, but to everything he touched.  _An instrument in the destruction of anyone ignorant enough to care_.  He didn’t understand how it could matter.  _I should be fucking dead._  But both Adam and Gansey had asked him.  There seemed to be a particular weight attached to the words that Ronan could not grip the consequence of.  He wasn’t sure what they were asking, really.

“Between falling asleep and waking up here?  No.  Nothing real.”  Gansey quickly cut his gaze to Adam.  He flung him a look that was unmistakably meant to be significant.  Adam met his eyes, but either ignored the implication or pretended it was unclear.  His face was meticulously composed, empty and uncomprehending.

Gansey sighed.  Matthew toyed with the blanket at Ronan’s feet.  Declan wore quiet concern.  Adam looked everywhere that wasn’t him.

Memories of Adam’s chilly dismissal and bitter malice made the distance ache.  He knew, _knew_ that this Adam Parrish was nothing remotely like the one from his nightmare.  The Adam sitting rigidly in that chair didn't even know such a cruel version of himself had existed anywhere, for any amount of time.  It wasn't fair for Ronan to attach his dredged up fears to him.  But that didn't stop his chest from aching, his pulse from racing, his eyes from searching, searching for some hint of the warmth he hoped to find.

Gansey looked from Ronan to Adam and back again.  Obviously, he noticed the tension stark between them, a feat made less impressive by how sharp and conspicuous it was.  “All right, let’s give them some time to themselves,” Gansey announced, and moved to usher his brothers out of the room.

_Thanks, Dad,_ Ronan thought, and tried to convey the sentiment through his expression.  It had been far kinder than the ‘don’t you assholes have somewhere to be’ that had been poised to slip out of Ronan’s mouth at any moment.  And because the direction came from Gansey, Declan respected it.  The Lynch brothers smiled, hugged, and bid him to get better soon before departing for a time.  Gansey dipped a brotherly nod at Ronan.  Message received.  He attempted to assault Adam with that meaningful glance one more time, unsuccessfully, before he breathed out an aggrieved sigh and left the room.

Finally, they were alone together.  Adam could scarcely stand to look at him.  Anxiety churned in Ronan’s gut.

Perhaps Adam was pissed off at him for his failure, for coming so close to killing himself with a nightmare.  He had no way of knowing how traumatic the dream had been; he may not have understood how very firmly Ronan did _not_ want any part of it back in the waking world.  Maybe Adam had not understood the risks still attached to Ronan, despite his developing control and the elimination of the demon.  Maybe he didn't like facing the evidence of it.  Maybe he didn't want to anymore.  Maybe this was more than he had bargained for.

But there had been a multitude of moments where Ronan, attention keenly focused on Adam, had noticed suggestive muscle twitches.  Involuntary.  Quickly controlled, but seemingly significant.  Like Adam was physically restraining himself from moving closer.  Was it possible he wanted to?

“Shit, Parrish, cut yourself some slack.  You’re going to give yourself a damn ulcer.”

Adam didn’t respond.  He stared at him, expression mostly blank.  The twist of complication imprinted there was enough to worry Ronan.  Yes, it was anger.  He definitely seemed angry.  And… hurt?  Jesus, had he caused this?

“All right, Parrish, did I do something to you?”  Ronan couldn’t imagine a world where his having hurt Adam would be anything other than a laughable impossibility.  But— but.  He _had_ lost track of all the hours between closing his eyes that night and waking here.  It may have been theoretically possible.  An outlandishly troublesome thought.

The ugly sound that ripped from Adam’s mouth matched the revulsion scrawled across his face.  _Shit_ , thought Ronan.  “You don’t remember anything from that night?”

_Damn._ “I told you, I don’t remember anything after I went to sleep.  Not anything real.”  Adam aimed a heavy, judgment-filled gaze at him for several seconds before Ronan could no longer tolerate it.  “Jesus shit Parrish, just fucking tell me what I did to you.  I have no clue.  I don’t lie.  You know that.”

The weight of that gaze crushed against him for a few more moments before it morphed into pity, then back into something midway between disdain and remorse.  _Fucking hell, I must have done something terrible_.  He just couldn’t understand.  How could he have hurt Adam like that?  He never would have, if he’d been at all himself.  Was he incapable of anything but ruination?

Ronan had been operating under the presumption that even if he was out of his mind, his body would know better.  It should have had a physical aversion to hurting Adam Parrish, even if nobody was home upstairs.  Now knowing otherwise, Ronan knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep sharing a bed with Adam again.  Too dangerous.  That was if Adam actually ever wanted that again, which seemed less and less likely with every passing second and each mile-long inch between them.  _Fuck_.

“It was me, wasn’t it?”

The apparent change in subject unbalanced Ronan.  “What?”

“It was me.  Not a demon.  Not a night horror.  _I_ did this to you,” he gestured vaguely from Ronan’s forehead to his abdomen.  “Didn’t I?”

Ronan’s thoughts were tires spinning in mud.  “W-why would you say that?”

“For fuck’s sake, Ronan,” Adam hissed.  “When you…  It was when you woke up.  You heard my voice, and you just _bolted_ across the room.  You were so goddamn afraid.  It took me a bit to connect the dots, to recognize that it was me you were terrified of.  But when I saw the bruises around your neck, I think I started to realize.”  Adam’s knuckles had turned white against the chair arms.  Ronan struggled to swallow.

“I dropped down beside you,” he continued, tone tinged with incredulity.  “And you actually acted like I was going to _hit_ you.  I was just trying to reach for your hand, and you fought me.  You fought me so damn much.”  A bitter curve slashed across Adam’s lips.  “Though now I suppose that may have been because you were trying to hold your insides together.”  His words were drenched in wry resentment.

“You were so afraid of me.  It wasn’t until I completely broke down in front of you that you stopped.  But by then… all you could do was lift your hand to my cheek for the barest second, whisper that you were sorry, and pass out, leaving us both in a pool of your blood.  Goddamn it, _you almost died!_   So don’t…  Do _not_ not-lie your way out of this to spare my damn feelings, Lynch.  I did this to you, didn’t I?”

Ronan looked away.  What could he possibly say?  He had been so wrong.  Adam was not oblivious.  He knew.  He had figured it out.  Ronan, again, had not realized the depth of damage his nightmare had unleashed upon the real world.  How much trauma he had caused Adam.  He would never forget this.  Would he ever be able to forgive him?  “Not,” he started.  Adam tensed with indignant outrage, ready to fight him to the bitter end over the denial.  “Not at first.  But.  Yes.”

Adam gradually loosed a breath that sounded as if it held the entire weight of the world.  “And yet you can actually sit there and worry because you think you did something to _me_.  Unbelievable.”  Something nebulous clicked into place and began to solidify.  Ronan suddenly understood something about Adam.

“Adam.”

“What?” he barked.  Ronan, who had wonderingly gathered that the venom leaching from Adam was directed inward, was not fazed by the harshness.

“Come here.  Please.”  How could Adam have possibly thought he was to blame for any part of this?  Every last bit had been on Ronan.

Adam stared at him vacantly.  When he still did not move, Ronan raised an expectant eyebrow.  Adam relented with a ragged exhalation, moving his chair as close to the bed as it would go.  He stretched a hand toward him.  Following another brief hesitation, Adam took it.  Ronan ran his thumb along Adam’s affectionately.  “Hey.  Don’t be like this.  There’s no reason for it.  It wasn’t you.  I know that.  None of this was remotely your fault.”  That was his burden to bear.

“You said you didn’t know you were dreaming,” Adam hollowly intoned.

“Yeah, well, hell was definitely on the top list of possibilities.”

Another sigh.  “This… I thought you were done with the self-hatred bullshit after Kavinsky and the night horrors.”

An involuntary shudder rocked through him.  “So did I.”  A dangerous smile twisted his lips.  “Turns out when you have an entire cast of nightmares reminding you of everything that has and could still go wrong, that changes.”

Adam’s brow furrowed.  “Tell me about it?”

“Not right now, Parrish.  That hell is still a little too fresh.”  It was an omission, a sensible substitute for the more important reason — _sharing this will cut me to shreds, and you still feel too far away_.  He wasn’t sure if Adam heard the difference, but he did not ask again.

“Some time, though?”

“Sure.”

They sat in silence for a full minute before Ronan interrupted it.  His thoughts had twisted and turned, but kept wheeling around one particular point.  His voice was quiet when he spoke.  “You’ll be seeing less of me.”

“Why?” Adam demanded, snatching his hand away.  An emotion that wasn’t anger had finally crept into his voice.  Ronan wondered if they might be okay after all.

“Damn nightmare was right about one thing; I’ve been selfish.  I’ve been trying to spend as much time as I could with you before you leave for college.”  He looked away.  “So much I’ve been neglecting work at the Barns.  Dreaming.  Trying to bring back something to wake the dreams.   After I almost — after what almost happened to Matthew and Chainsaw and Opal, I can’t.  I can’t take chances with them.” 

Adam’s face had softened.  “I understand.  They’re your family.”  He leaned closer to Ronan, eyes ablaze.  “But you don’t have to pull away.  You don’t have to do it alone.  Whatever… whatever Cabeswater woke within me, it’s still here.  To some extent, at least.  I’m still different.  Other.  I can still do readings, still have the psychic connections.  I think I could help.  I want to.  I’m almost certain I could still scry.”

Ronan scoffed.  “Parrish, the entire population of 300 Fox Way thinks that’s a bad idea, remember?  It’s dangerous.  Too dangerous.  And what exactly the hell do you think would happen?  Cabeswater is gone.  We wouldn’t be going there together like before.  It would just be me.  You think you can scry your way into my goddamn head?”

“I think I could, yeah.”  Was it even possible that they had that strong of a connection?  It didn’t seem consummately absurd, which was a vaguely frightening thought.

“No,” he growled.  “You don’t have Cabeswater to anchor you anymore.  It would be way the fuck too risky.”

“I’d have you.”

“I would be asleep, dipshit.  You can’t ask me to…  Godfuckingdamn, you can’t ask me to risk coming out of my head and waking up to you _gone_.  Do you have any fucking idea…” he trailed off.

Adam had leveled Ronan’s own stare at him, the sort that took something from a person.  Of course he did.  That was practically what had happened.  It was the very reason they were both in this damn hospital at this precise moment.  Guilt punched through him yet again.  “ _No_.”

Adam did not relent.  “Chainsaw or Opal, then,” he suggested.

“Sure, Parrish, we’ll just train Chainsaw to peck you real hard if you get too fucking creepy.”  The acid in his voice was hot enough to burn him, too.  It wasn’t that he wanted to piss Adam off — far from it.  It was that he couldn’t stand the idea of Adam getting hurt for his sake.  He could not be responsible for that.  Incinerating the bridge he’d extended seemed like the safest course of action.

Worse, he was sure Adam was right.  Opal would help him.  Opal loved Adam.  She would be willing to watch over him.  But, fuck.  He wasn’t going to say it.  So much was wrong with this idea.  Ronan wasn’t sure they should ask such a thing of her.  He wasn’t sure Adam should be asking it of him.  _Magician._ Could they do it?  It was possible they could.  Fuck.  He didn’t want to encourage the topic in the slightest.  No, he had to make Adam drop it.  He couldn’t contemplate how awful it would be if they tried and something went wrong.  How, even if both of them were fine in the end, it would inevitably turn into a land mine.  Something was already fraying between them, and he didn’t want it to snap.

Strained silence prickled around them.  Too many words left unsaid glutted the air for it to be comfortable as it usually was.  Ronan’s last scathing words rang in his ears.  Harrowing memories thrashed to escape from where he’d tried to imprison them.  At least Adam was looking at him now.  The problem was that he didn’t know what to do under his stare.

Operating on muscle memory, Ronan’s hand sought out his wrist.  His fingers curled around nothing.  “Here,” Adam said, shifting and tossing Ronan’s leather bands into his lap.  “I wouldn’t let them throw them away.”  Ronan hesitantly picked them up.  “I tried to get all the blood out.  I don’t know if it worked.  Hell, as much as you chew on them...  They probably taste like blood and hospital soap.  You should dream yourself a new set.”  He ran his fingers along one band.  So many emotions writhed within him.  “I just didn’t want you to lose them.”  A tiny smile quirked Ronan’s lips. 

“Thanks, Parrish.”  He wrapped the strands back around his wrist.  The restoration of that small bit of normalcy shifted him back onto his axis.  He was nearer to feeling like himself than he had been since he’d opened his eyes.  Adam slotted his fingers between his.  The ensuing quiet was considerably more tranquil.

“When you get out of here, we sh— you should,” Adam stumbled over the words, and he felt despicable for emphatically pushing him away.  Ronan could tell he was trying.  He was attempting to bridge the gap between them, but Ronan had difficulty making the undertaking any easier.  He knew he had to sacrifice much of his remaining time with him.  It was the right thing to do.  And he would not accept his offer when it came with so many unnecessary risks.  He could not endeavor to soften the blow when it was taking nearly everything he had to subdue the demons in his head.  “Stay at the Barns.  Or you’re still always welcome at St. Agnes.”  Adam, reaching out again.

_Try harder._   “My room’s a slaughter house, isn’t it?” he groaned.

“No,” Adam smiled.  “No, you apparently just need a new bed.  The mattress was ruined.  Gansey hired professional cleaners.”

Ronan snorted.  “Of course he did.”

“I am learning that a ridiculous sum of money is extraordinarily good at ensuring ‘no questions asked.’”

“Yeah…” Ronan let the word dangle in the air, unable to gauge Adam’s stance on the issue from his tone.

“Nah, I don’t mind this time.  Hell, I couldn’t.  It got you to the hospital fast, without us having to try to cobble together a believable excuse.  Entirely failing.  All getting arrested.  You know.”  His crooked smile was inviting.

“Oh God.  Yes.  Jesus.”  He was incredibly fucking glad Gansey had been there for Adam.  Things could have been so much worse, in ways Ronan had not even considered.

“Could you just imagine?  I’d dumped a bucket of water over you — last resort to wake you up after you’d started convulsing.  So, first off, you and your bed were soaked.  And there was that ridiculously large bucket on the floor.  Then, _God_.  ‘No officer, I swear he wasn’t like this before.  He just woke up this way.  No, we didn’t try to drown him, strangle him, then stab him before you came, why do you ask?  What do you mean, where’s the weapon?  What do you mean, we’re under arrest?  No, really, it wasn’t us!’  What a mess.”

Ronan chuckled darkly.  They relaxed in companionable silence together for several more moments before Ronan looked to the clock on the wall.  Another thought occurred to him.  “Parrish?”

“Yeah?”

“Get out of here.”

“What? Why?” Adam’s brow crinkled.

“You don’t need to be here.  I’ll survive.  I know you’ve missed at least two shifts.  Go to work.  Don’t miss any more because of me.”  Ronan was sure that if Adam wasn’t already calculating how many meals he would have to skip and how many hours of sleep he would have to instead devote to homework to compensate, he would be soon. 

Ronan made a mental note to consistently shove dinner at him for a minimum of a week.  It was the least he could do, even if it was just getting food delivered to him at work.  If Adam fought him on it, he would gladly remind him that he had spent two days in an uncomfortable hospital room because of Ronan, and that he would damn well let him try to make up for it, so help him God.

“Are you sure?  I don’t mind to stay with you.”

Ronan squeezed his hand.  “Come on, you know I’m not dead now.  Go.  No reason to put your life on hold.  I’ll see you when I get out of this hellhole.”

Adam looked at the clock as well.  Ronan could virtually feel the force of his deliberation.  Practicality won out.  “Okay.  Okay.  But you have to answer your damn phone in case I’m able to call.  You’re in the hospital.  You don’t get the luxury of your irrational phone hatred.”

“Fine,” Ronan grumbled.

Adam stood and stretched.  Ronan gratefully appreciated the display of his lean body elongating, elegant muscles moving exquisitely under the surface.  He sent another quick text message on Ronan’s phone before he set it and the keys to the BMW on the table.  “I’ll have to get Gansey or Declan to take me to my car.  Yours is in the lot here.”  Adam looked sheepish.  “Sorry about that.  You were dying.  I needed speed.”

Warmth spread through Ronan.  He very much liked the thought of Adam behind the wheel of his car, even though the circumstances surrounding this instance had been dire.  “Hey, now.  None of that apology bullshit.  You can drive my car any time you want.”  He smirked.  “Preferably with me in it so I can enjoy the view.”

Adam grinned before leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead.  A pleasant shiver worked its way through Ronan.  “You’re sure you’ll be all right if I leave?”

Ronan nodded.  “Go.  I’ll be fine.”

_Eventually._ It was another omission.  He neglected to say that it could be a damn long time in coming.  He didn’t want to worry Adam into staying when he had more important things to tend to than Ronan’s problems. 

His body hurt, sure.  He’d been injured severely enough to earn himself a hospital stay, so that was expected.  He could tolerate the physical pain rather well, especially with the painkillers pumping through his veins. 

It was his mind assailing him that was just this side of unbearable.  He couldn’t stand to close his eyes.  It was so much worse when there was nothing to distract him.  He wondered just how long it would take before the flashes of horror stopped staining the insides of his eyelids.


	5. is it the beating of the chest...

This shift was never going to end.  Adam had been pushed to the brink many times – working three jobs in between rigorous schoolwork, an unbearably shitty home life, and magical adventures did that to a person.  He could not, however, recall having felt quite like this before.  This reminded him of Cabeswater, substantiating sensory overload as a means of demanding his attention.  But this was all him, only him.  The very fibers of his nerves were broiling, bristling sensations needling at him, swarming with frantic energy.  Restive tension sizzled within him.  It was the grinding cycle of putting in extra hours at work, catching up on assignments, sleeping alone in his own bed, going to school, wearily repeat.  He had done it before.  But that was _before._   He was restless.  He was wanting.  Every inch of his skin prickled with the desire to be somewhere else, to be doing something else.  To be with someone else.  As he lay working underneath a well-worn Toyota, all Adam could think about was Ronan, Ronan, Ronan. 

It had been the case since Declan had delivered him to his car.  Following a quick shower, Adam had called Boyd to let him know that he would, in fact, be coming to work after all — and to ask if he could use him for some extra hours.  Boyd, who had agreeably let Adam beg off two shifts on account of his significant other being in the hospital, had been more than happy to hear it.  One of the full-time mechanics had called in with a stomach bug, and the number of waiting repair jobs had multiplied. 

When Adam had shown up, visibly wrung out with worry and emotional exhaustion, Boyd had regarded him warily.  “Look, kid, I won’t tell you no since I really do need ya here, but…  You sure this is where you wanna be?  I already let ‘cha off the hook.  You can head back to RMH, spend some more time with your gal.”  Adam had eyed him blankly, the assumption grating on his nerves.  But if he wasn’t mistaken, there had been a subtle twist to the word, an unsaid question contained within.

Adam had not answered it.  Ronan had dropped by the garage to pester Adam frequently enough over the past several weeks that there legitimately could have been an implication.  But he still wasn’t sure whether it was okay to discuss Ronan with other people in that context.  It wasn’t exactly like they were hiding their relationship, but telling his boss ‘my boyfriend, actually’ seemed to be on an entirely different plane of frankness.  Adam had shaken his head and merely answered, “Sent me to work.” 

Boyd had said, “Okay, then,” and that had been that.   
  


Sixteen hours of work, too many hours of homework, too few hours of fitful sleep, and one-and-a-half school days passed before Adam had snapped.  He had stalked up to Gansey and Henry in the dining hall, a summer thunderstorm brimming with agitated energy.  Gansey had looked up at him pleasantly, expectantly, but Adam did not sit.  Lightning struck.  He had heaved a sigh of oceanic depth.  “Can I borrow your phone?”  A knowledgeable grin had split Gansey’s face, but Adam hadn’t cared, because he had surrendered it.  
  


Snatches of his last two conversations with Ronan via hospital and phone were jostling against one another and the slew of anxieties festering in his head, leaving room for little else.  Adam lost his grip on the wrench, and was barely able to move fast enough to avoid a nasty black eye.  The clatter echoed throughout the garage.  Adam groaned.  This was not like him at all.  This… this was out of control.   
  


As he had stood outside listening to the phone ringing, ringing, ringing, Adam had stewed over Ronan’s misleading him, not answering his phone after all.  _Damn him_.  Adam had needed so badly just to hear his voice.  Finally, finally it had surfaced.  “Parrish?”  Adam had breathed a wild breath. 

“I was starting to fear you actually thought ‘you are still in the hospital; I am allowed to be worried’ was not a good enough excuse to pick up your damn phone.”  Ronan, being his utter bastard self, had laughed.

They had talked about mostly nothing, and Adam had been fine with that.  Ronan had brought up Blue’s having visited him after school the day before.  “Yeah, Sargent said that if I ever worried her like that again, she’d kill me herself.  Then the little shit punched me in the arm.  Who the fuck does that?  We should probably talk to Dick about her hospital-patient-abusing tendencies.” 

Adam had asked when he thought he’d get out.  Ronan had said they were still throwing around words like hematocrit and electrolytes and hypotension and “all that scientific shit _you_ would understand,” but that it would hopefully be soon, because “I’m getting real tired of this shithole.”  Adam had indeed understood, and it had made him squirm.  Further reminders of how much blood Ronan had lost, of just how close to the verge of death he’d danced.  “Doing anything Saturday?” he had inquired.  Adam had responded that he didn’t have work until four and had quietly hoped the question meant Ronan would come by to see him.  
  


But here was Adam, nearly at the end of his originally scheduled shift.  There had been no sign of Ronan, nor his food.  Adam’s stomach growled.  Inexplicably, Ronan had had meals delivered to him at Boyd’s the last few days.  Adam had been tempted to give him shit about it, but he figured he could stand to let Ronan get away with it, since Ronan was Ronan, Ronan was injured, and Adam was starving.

Adam’s desires bashed against each other.  He wanted to see Ronan badly.  He had almost lost him, permanently, and they hadn’t spent near enough time together to fill the gaping maw of worry that had opened in Adam days prior.  But Ronan had said there would be less of that, hadn’t he?  He didn’t want to push.  It felt like he and Ronan were on the tenuous edge of something, and that if Adam accidentally nudged him the wrong direction, he’d simply let go.  That was the last thing Adam wanted.

He felt reprehensible.  It was indecent, selfish to be fretting over the potential fragility of their relationship when he was nearly positive Ronan was really suffering.  That he had been tormented with far more trauma than he’d let on, and that it hadn’t yet loosed him from its grip.  Adam knew he should have been thinking only of Ronan’s wellbeing.  Ronan himself.  Not ruminating over _them_ until he was assured Ronan was okay.  Knowing and doing were two vastly different things.  
  


When he’d returned to the dining hall and settled into a seat, Gansey had pinned him under the weight of a significant gaze.  “Have you spoken to Ronan yet?” Gansey had questioned over his plate.

Adam had given him the most incredulous of expressions for his trouble.  “I just did?  Literally, just now.”

Gansey had gifted him a withering stare in return, a sharp specimen that rightfully belonged in the arsenal of Ronan or Blue.  “We both know that’s not what I meant.”  
  


Adam toyed with the idea of calling him from one of the lines at Boyd’s before he left.  _Stop this._   He forced himself to resist.  _Stop being selfish_.  Ronan needed space to heal.  He would talk to Adam when he was damn well ready to do so.  He didn’t have any right to press.

Anxiety hooked a keen-edged claw deep in his gut.  He couldn’t stop it from worming its way through his chest.  Ronan had specifically told him that he knew the injuries were in no way his fault.  That should have quieted his worry.  But Ronan was notoriously fae-like in his ability to not lie without actually telling the truth.  It didn’t mean something else hadn’t happened, that there was not something burdening Ronan’s mind that had him second-guessing Adam.  He had, after all, pushed him away.

He objectively knew that when he’d chosen Ronan, it would be the difficult choice.  For Adam, that had been because it meant restructuring his long-held vision of the future.  Saying yes to Ronan was saying yes to something real, to returning to Virginia.  He had expended so much effort, so many endless hours running himself into the ground – his only goal for years to escape Henrietta for good, to attend a great college, to make something of himself.  He was succeeding on at least one front. 

On his makeshift nightstand at St. Agnes rested an envelope containing an acceptance letter to the Ivy League school of his dreams, and a financial aid offer so generous it may as well have been called a full ride.  He would have to work during the summer and school year, but he would no longer agonize over pennies.  It was the reason he’d let himself cut back to one and a half jobs – Boyd’s (the one he enjoyed) and supplemental shifts at the factory.  He wanted to spend more time with his friends before they went their separate ways, in case the unthinkable happened.  In case they did not make their way back to each other.

So, yes, Adam had anticipated some challenges — but he thought they revolved around reformulating his future and weaving Ronan’s nebulous plans into it.  But deadly nightmares and hospital trips?  He had _not_ expected that. 

Ronan had experienced so much suffering lately.  It seemed so recently that he’d dealt with the fallout of his mother’s death, his near unmaking, and Gansey’s death and resurrection.  That he’d started acting like himself again.  Would Ronan ever be given a chance to heal?  He couldn’t imagine what was going on in Ronan’s head right now.  He was afraid of what was going on in Ronan’s head.

He didn’t want to lose Ronan over something in a nightmare.  Granted, it was not a normal nightmare, and he didn’t want to lose Ronan at all.  But over _this_?  It would just be so… pointless.  So futile.  If it was going to be anything, Adam wanted it to be something he could combat, something he could triumph over.  He couldn’t kill Ronan’s demons.

“Damn it,” he muttered.  _Stop this._ This wasn’t like him at all.  He figured seeing his boyfriend nearly die in his arms because a dream version of himself had attempted to murder him entitled him to some measure of brooding, but this was out of control.  Adam was supposed to be the rational, pragmatic one.  The one that took the scientific approach, not the rash emotional one.  How had he ended up here, this place where his thoughts were so fully devoured by this boy?

Adam sighed violently and rolled out from under the car.  He needed to take a break.  Maybe cold night air filling his lungs would do something to clear his mind.  His thoughts were still spiraling as he stood at the sink, roughly cleaning the grease off his hands.  He desperately needed a distraction.  Nothing was working well enough.  As soon as his hands were dry, he dug them into his hair.  He still felt so distorted, knotted up and tipped off-center.  He thought he could gladly crawl out of his own skin.

He found Boyd behind him when he turned.  “You okay, kid?”

Adam frowned.  _Debatable._ “I’m gonna take my break.”  He pushed past him toward the automated panel, hitting a button to open one of the bay doors. 

“Y’know you can take off if you need to.  You were only scheduled ‘til eight.  Ain’t like you’re not gonna be back tomorrow.”

Adam did know that.  But he could also feel the all-consuming restlessness that gnawed at him when he _did_ have tasks to distract him.  It would be better if he spent as much time as he could working, earning money, rather than sitting alone, fighting with his thoughts.  He already had several unpleasant hours of that lined up for tomorrow.  He resolved to seek out Gansey’s company instead. 

As the door quit rattling on its tracks, Adam turned to respond.  Boyd had a perplexing little smile on his face.  “Hey there, son.  Feeling better now are ya?”  Adam’s mind blanked.  Slowly, he pivoted, and sure enough, there was Ronan.  He was silent, a single eyebrow raised in response.  It wasn’t disdainful like usual, only mildly questioning.  Adam was a great deal more than mildly questioning.  He was having trouble computing that Ronan was actually standing there, and Boyd… Boyd _knew_?  “Go on,” he said.  “Get outta here.  See you tomorrow.”  

Adam was still lost in a fog as he fetched his keys and wallet from the counter and followed Ronan from the garage.  Ronan had lowered himself into the driver’s seat of the BMW and was looking at him expectantly.  Adam stood frozen a few feet away.  Visible under the pale illumination of the dome light, Ronan arched another eyebrow.  This time it expressed moderate concern.  “Get in, loser.  I got us Chinese.”

Adam ran his palms up and down his face.  It helped, just enough for him to recover his ability to speak.  “Should you really be driving?”

Ronan snorted inelegantly.  “We both know the answer to that.  Are you really going to make me say it?”

“When did you get out?”

“Recent development.”

Adam looked from the open door to the Hondayota.  “What about my car?” he asked half-heartedly.

An impatient sigh escaped Ronan.  “ _Obviously_ , I will drive you to work tomorrow.  Come on, Parrish, don’t make this ugly.”

Adam got in the car.


	6. …that makes us fear the rest?

Adam had forgotten how peaceful the world could be.  As the BMW wended up the narrow drive, he marveled again at the lush otherworldliness of this patch of Singer’s Falls.  Despite resting a mere half-hour from Henrietta, it may as well have been a different continent.  The distinction was amplified under the cover of darkness.  Night was darker here, the stars brighter.

Adam hadn’t been back in weeks.  The Barns was where Ronan privately whiled away his mornings and early afternoons, the hours when Aglionby was in session.  Adam frequently saw him after school, when he dropped by the garage.  After work, he’d routinely head to Monmouth, and Ronan, who had an uncanny knowledge of his shifts, would either be there already or just arriving.

The three of them had spent numerous hours in central room of the factory.  Gansey and Adam worked on assignments and studied.  Ronan listened to music, fiddled with dream shit, and was a general bother.  Whatever he did, he often stayed close to Adam.  Blue was there more than half the time and worked on homework less than half of it — preferring instead to distract Gansey or entertain Ronan.  Henry was present with fair regularity as well.  Adam still wasn’t perfectly comfortable around him (Ronan, who had been a right pit bull to Adam when _he_ had been the newest of Gansey’s friends, was even less so), but they were getting there.  Many nights ended at Nino’s.

All of them ended with Adam and Ronan sharing a bed.  When he and Ronan wanted time alone, they would retreat to his room.  If Adam didn’t want company, they would retreat to St. Agnes.  On the rare occasions when Adam couldn’t handle even Ronan’s company, he would turn up after midnight to wordlessly crawl into Adam’s bed.  When it had started, it had been Adam, comforting Ronan.  It had quickly become a habit, one he had not wanted to break.  Nights spent curled against the warm safety of Ronan were nights of the most restful sleep Adam had ever experienced.  He’d spent so much of this week fitfully tossing and turning.

Ronan drew the BMW to a halt in the gravel and killed the engine.  The night was pitch-black, an inkiness that didn’t seem to belong outside of dense forests and deep caves.  It was broken only by the yellow porch light and the incandescent flicker of magical fireflies.  Adam smiled.  Only with Ronan could it ever make sense for fireflies to exist in the dead of winter.  Without the soft throb of electronica seeping from the speakers, it was utterly quiet.  Adam opened his door and stood, inhaling the chill of the night.  It was unseasonably warm, yet the air held enough of a bite to render his breath a visible puff.  He could see the stars spreading above him, bright and clear.  It was so still here, a halcyon paradise.  Adam was tranquil for the first time in what had felt like an eternity. 

Ronan grunted as he pulled himself from the car.  “Can you grab that shit, Parrish?  Fucking stitches.”

Adam snatched the two-liter and bag of food from the floorboard.  He eyed Ronan, who looked distinctly uncomfortable.  “You okay?”

He slammed his door and ambled toward the porch.  “Yeah, whatever.”  Adam joined him while he fiddled with the doorknob.  “I’ll take one of those shitty pills.  Just wanted to wait ‘til I got you.”

As soon as Adam crossed the threshold, an explosion of sound erupted.  “Adam!” Opal was there, jumping up and down on the couch cushions with excitement.  She darted toward him in an ungraceful stumble.  “Adam, Adam, Adam!” She circled frenetically until he deposited the contents of his arms on the coffee table.  Leapt against him with a crushing hug the instant he had.

“Jesus, calm down,” Ronan chastised from the kitchen.  “It hasn’t been that long since you’ve seen him.”  When he returned, it was with a small pile of things — plates, silverware, cups, and an amber vial — in hand.  Opal turned toward him, wearing a belligerent expression.

“Bullshit, you never bring him here anymore.”  A curious guilt colored Ronan’s face.  He wondered what had put it there.  Not working hard enough on the dream thing?  Not bringing Adam here instead of Monmouth?  Not giving Opal more chances to see him?  There was no telling with Ronan, but Adam wished he wasn’t thinking whatever it was.  Especially since he’d told Adam he’d be spending more time here alone.  This felt like a rare occasion, not the start of a new routine.  Adam’s eyes roamed over him, searching.  He didn’t know what he was looking for.  He took the plates from Ronan, handing back the medicine.

“Yeah, well.  Gansey gets lonely.”  Opal rolled her eyes with such glorious disdain it could only have come from Ronan.  Ronan glared at her as he grudgingly dumped a pill into his hand and swallowed it with contempt.  “Okay, little puke.  You’ve seen him.  Get lost.”

“Don’t be such a shitbag, Kerah.”

Laughter rocketed from Adam.  Ronan slanted a glower his way before refocusing on the petulant girl.  “Nope.  This is the time for grown-ups to talk,” he jeered, “and trash-eating, foul-mouthed satyrs to go to bed.”

Opal looked indignant.  “Ass!”

“Now.”  Opal expelled a surly, drawn-out sigh before she moved to leave.  “Come here,” Ronan said fondly.  He hugged her tight against his legs.  “Good night.  Parrish too.”

She returned to Adam.  Adam, who had free range of motion, bent and gathered her in his arms for a true embrace.  He kissed her forehead, eliciting an open grin.  “Good night,” he murmured before letting her down.  Opal tromped up the stairs without further argument.

Ronan carefully lowered himself to the couch and heaved a massive sigh before kicking his shoes across the floor.  Adam stripped off his coveralls, sat to his left and started dishing up their food.  “You know, that’s going to be a problem if she goes to school.”

Ronan snorted.  “Yeah, that and the Latin.”  He accepted a plate and fork from Adam.  “And the hooves.”

“And the highly inappropriate eating habits,” Adam added. 

They talked about various nothings and shared several more laughs as they ate their food.  It was pleasant.  It was easy.  It felt right.  Adam felt right.  Finally, he felt like he could breathe again.  He was quiet, calm.  He was _here_ , not suffocating under the weight of his own thoughts.

By the time they’d finished eating, Adam had worked up enough nerve to ask the question.  “Will you tell me now?”  It had been gnawing at him for days.  This version of Ronan seemed enough like himself that he thought he could get away with asking it. 

Ronan grimaced, but did not say no.  He tucked two fingers under his leather bracelets and twisted them with agitation.  Then he took a deep, bracing breath, and told him. 

As he began to speak, his tone was so detached that Adam feared he’d made a mistake.  After Ronan started recounting the events of the dream, he understood that distancing himself from the words as much as possible was probably the only way he could make it through the explanation.  Adam listened intently, shock and horror intensifying with every word Ronan shared.

It had been so much worse than Adam ever could have guessed.  He’d known it had been awful, since it had ended with a dream Adam nearly killing him.  But this…  This was every cruelty that Ronan’s mind could have conceivably heaped upon him.  Every person he cared about, dead or filled with brutal loathing.  How in the hell was Ronan coping with this?  How was he able to function when he had lived through all _that_?  When he hadn’t even had the knowledge of it being a dream to anchor him as it occurred?  It was no damn wonder he’d woken so thoroughly terror-stricken. 

Adam was troubled by his own appearances in the nightmare.  Clearly, he’d not been singled out as a vehicle for malice toward Ronan.  All of the most important people in Ronan’s life had had that dubious honor.  Still, he was surprised that he’d only been kind to him once.  And that hadn’t even lasted long before it had morphed into brittle hatred.  Indifferent, absent, normal, callous, then the very definition of ruthless, brutal cruelty.  His thoughts stuttered over that same truth from days ago, now wholly confirmed.  _I did this, I did this, I did this._   “Why would you dream me like that?” he whispered.

“Hell, I don’t know, man.  It was a nightmare.  Why do we dream anything?  Why did I dream of dead parents and brothers?”

 _Because those are the things you’re most afraid of._   “You’re deflecting.”  Ronan wore a jackal’s grin.

Why would Ronan conjure a dream Adam to murder him?  Because he was afraid the real Adam was going to tear his heart out.

And there it was.  Ronan’s fear, hidden for weeks.  Never exposed because he would never want Adam to think he was asking him for something he was not, something neither of them really wanted him to give. 

Adam was cursing himself furiously.  They’d never talked about this.  They’d never _talked_.  He knew neither he nor Ronan wanted to think about Adam’s imminent departure, so it had become a forbidden subject.  Neither of them had brought it up.  _Damn it._ Neither of them…  _Have you spoken to Ronan yet?_ Gansey’s words floated back to him.  _We both know that’s not what I meant._

“Oh, Ronan.”

Ronan sneered.  “‘Oh Ronan’ _what_?  Why are you using that fucking tone on me, Parrish?”  Adam knew he shouldn’t have expected any less.  Of course Ronan, having reluctantly laid the dark part of his heart bare, would be quick to slam the gates down around it.

“Damn it, Ronan, don’t.  I know how you are.  You don’t…  I—” he fumbled for words.  “This isn’t a game to me.  I’m not playing with you.  I know you’re not some… some pre-college fling.  I never would have gotten into this with you if I didn’t want something serious.  I know you don’t _do_ casual.  I knew it’d be all or nothing.  I would never have it be nothing.”

Ronan said nothing.  He looked profoundly unimpressed.

Adam continued, “I never would have started this, planning to walk away.  I wouldn’t hurt you like that, Ronan.”

Ronan’s expression was still carefully shuttered, all harsh angles and undisguised warning.  He didn’t speak a word.  He had once remarked to Adam:  _silence is never a wrong answer_.

“You really think I’m going to leave you.”  Disbelief and disappointment warred in his voice.

“You _are_ leaving, Einstein,” he growled.

The words were an opening volley in an argument set to mangle both of them.  He understood that this was going to be Ronan at his most difficult.  He was going to shape the truth into blades, and he was going to hurl them at Adam until he finally repelled him.

He was determined not to let him succeed.  “No.”

“You’re leaving the fucking state.”

“Not forever.”  He would come back.  Of course he would come back.

“You’ll be nine hours away.”  The number was shrapnel to the gut.  Yes, he would be.  When faced with it like that…  As an actual, tangible length of time, it sounded so much worse than he’d truly considered.  Nine hours away.  Eighteen hours a visit.  Three-quarters of one entire day spent in a vehicle.  He tasted acid at the back of his throat.

“Princeton is five,” Adam mumbled.  “I haven’t heard back from them yet.”  Two-fifths of one day per visit.

Ronan snorted indelicately, the sound filling the room.  He looked away.  “Just fucking go to Harvard, Parrish.  You know that’s your goddamn wet dream.”

The pit of worry within Adam yawned into a chasm.  This was feet rooted to sidewalk, time expanding, eyes wide, as an accident approached.  The roiling awareness of momentum, perception of a distance too trivial for evasion.  It was the hopeless anticipation of the sharp blare, the screech of metal on metal, the shatter of broken glass.  The sick nausea of dread. 

Adam’s thoughts skittered along the future unfolding before him.  Ronan, pushing him away.  Not avoiding him, not never speaking to him again.  He would want his time with their friends as much as Adam did.  Just Ronan, treating him with cool remove.  Ice in his eyes, steel in his heart.  Ronan, being purposely shitty, emptied of the fierce love underlying every coarse word and gesture.  And Gansey’s bitter disappointment — _I told you not to break him, Adam_.

“I’ll come back.”  Were the words as choked as they felt?

“Yeah, with what time?  Jesus shit, Parrish, you kill yourself over homework in high school.  Are you living in some fantasy world where you think an Ivy League education is somehow gonna have less?”

“You can visit.  It’d only be about five hours with the way you drive.”

Ronan eyed him balefully.

“I will get a phone.”

“You want me to dream you one, darlin’?” 

What Adam _wanted_ was for him to shut up.  He wanted to shut his spiteful mouth with his own.  He wanted to shake him.  He wanted to force him to listen, _just listen goddamn it_.  Why was he so determined to push him away?

“Fine, you will dream me a phone.  And you will _use_ yours.  I mean it.  You need to get over your damn phone aversion, at least for me.”

Ronan hummed noncommittally, eyes fixed across the room.  Adam’s breath felt small in his chest.  “Ronan, come on.  Be serious.  I–I’m really trying here.  I want this.  Please.  I know…  I know long distance is hard.  That it doesn’t even work well for people who actually _know_ how to talk to each other.”  He dislodged a frustrated huff.

“And _clearly_ we are _complete_ shit at communicating our feelings.”  Adam reached for his hand.  Ronan’s eyes flicked back to Adam, but his fingers dangled limply in his grip.  “But I also know that we are two of the most stubborn damn people on this entire planet.  We will make it work.”  He squeezed.  “If not by design, then by sheer force of will and determination.”

“You’re seriously Richard Gansey the Third-ing me right now?”

Adam snatched his hand away.  “Goddamn, you asshole.  You know what I mean.”

He stayed silent for a moment, letting their thoughts settle.  He could no longer bear to look at Ronan.  Something in him ached intensely.  When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.  “I was pretty sure you wanted this.  I _am_ sure I want this.  We will make this work.  If it doesn’t…”  His eyes closed, fingers tightened into a fist.  “If it doesn’t.  We.  Will.  Make.  It.”

“Okay.”

“Ronan, please—” he started, before the single word caught up to him.  “What?”  His gaze darted to Ronan’s.

“Okay, Parrish.  I like the sound of that.”

“Okay?  Okay, you’re done fighting me now?  Really?”  Ronan’s face was deliberately blank, but drained of its prior menace.  “Seemed like you were trying awfully hard to argue your way out of this.”

“Whatever.”  The muscles at one corner of his mouth twitched perceptibly.  “Just wanted to make sure we had all our bases covered before you,” he slipped into an atrocious approximation of a feminine southern accent, “broke my poor lil’ heart.”

Adam slapped at him.  “You are such a—”  Ronan was wearing a huge, honest smile that temporarily immobilized his lungs.  — _gorgeous animal_ , he finished mentally.

“I’m such a what, Parrish?  Couldn’t help but notice you lost your train of thought, there.”

“Such a gigantic asshole,” he retorted, still meaning both, trying to fold it into his tone. 

They were both quiet for a moment.  Adam rested a hand on Ronan’s thigh.  “Do you believe me?” he asked softly.

Ronan made a small noise of assent.

“We will make this work,” Adam repeated.

“Yes.”

“Say it, please.”  Ronan didn’t lie.  Adam needed to hear him say the words.  He needed to know that Ronan had the same conviction about this as he did.

Ronan gazed deep into his eyes.  He raised a hand and gently swept it into Adam’s hair.  He pressed his cheek against his palm.  “We’ll make it work, Adam.”  The thorns unraveled from around his heart.

Electric seconds ticked by, and a storm darkened in Ronan’s molten eyes.  Adam closed the distance between them with his mouth.  A wildfire raged through him.  He wondered if there would ever come a time when Ronan’s mouth on his would not ignite him like gasoline, would not reduce him to a smoldering pile of ashes.  He didn’t think so.  His pulse throbbed.  His hand gripped the side of Ronan’s face.  Mouth on mouth, lips against lips.  Ronan’s fingers tightened in his hair.  He felt it everywhere.  He wanted to be closer, closer.  He wanted to memorize the taste of him.  He wanted to crawl inside his skin. 

Ronan had let out a grunt of discomfort before Adam realized he actually had crawled halfway on top of him.  “Watch it, Parrish,” he admonished.  He flushed hot with shame.  What the hell was he thinking?  Ronan had only just gotten out of the hospital, and here was Adam advancing on him like some kind of savage animal.

“Sorry.”  He leaned back against the couch, trying to chase down his breath.  “Sorry.”

Ronan eyed him for a few long moments before huffing indignantly.  He pitched his knee over Adam’s thighs, straddling himself neatly in his lap and reattaching their mouths.

If he was ablaze before, this was scorched earth, nuclear winter.  Lava surged through his veins.  His hands slid under the hem of Ronan’s shirt, trailed up his back, down his sides.  Adam’s groan escaped into Ronan’s mouth.  Ronan’s tongue slipped into his.  Nails dragged against skin.  Ronan swore. 

Adam pulled back from him, breath heaving.  “Shirt. Off.”  Ronan grunted again, though not in displeasure. 

“Help then, you demanding bastard.”  He shifted forward to allow Adam to pull it up from behind.  Adam’s eyes rolled back at the sensation.  “Easy this time.  Stitches and all,” he grumbled, smirking.  As soon as his shirt was out of the way, Adam worked to kiss it off his face.

Ronan’s hands sought out bare skin at his waist.  Adam’s hands were everywhere, traversing the sharp planes of his body.  Ronan pressed closer.  He let out an embarrassing sound of bliss.  His hands drifted lower, fingertips grazed fabric, _lower_.

Adam’s hands slipped past the waistband and over the soft swell of Ronan’s ass.  He let out a pleasure-wracked moan that seemed disproportionate to the amount of sensation the motion could have provided.  The sound wrapped around him and pierced him with a bright flare of desire.  An explicit image flashed through his mind, one far and away more sexual than he and Ronan had ever gotten.  A wild one, a reckless one.  He wondered how it would feel to sink himself deep inside him.  He thought it might just be the closest thing to heaven, to touching the sun.  He wondered if Ronan was thinking the same. 

He nuzzled his cheek along Ronan’s and shifted his hips against him in a gentle rhythm.  Something inside him twisted itself into convoluted knots.  He wanted, he wanted, he wanted.  “Ronan?”

His breath puffed heavily against Adam’s neck a few more times before he answered with a shaky, “Yeah?”

Adam drew his hands back over Ronan’s hips.  Unsteady fingers unbuttoned the fly of Ronan’s jeans.  By the time he drew down the zipper, Ronan was practically hyperventilating.  “Take these off.”  There was a brief pause during which Adam feared he had asked for too much. 

Breath still heaving, Ronan carefully moved off of him.  Adam groaned at the lack of pressure.  Already, he missed the friction and found he desperately wanted it back.  Ronan shucked his jeans as quickly as he could without causing further injury, but did not let them drop to the floor.  He looked back to Adam, eyes drawn to the bulge now clearly straining against Adam’s thin sweatpants and lazily trailing upward before meeting his gaze.  Adam shivered under the inspection.  “Shouldn’t we probably go upstairs?”

Adam couldn’t stop the smirk that cut across his face.  “Trying to get me in your bed, Lynch?”

Ronan’s leer bit back.  “You’re on to me, Parrish.”  He grabbed at one of Adam’s shoulders and urged him off the couch.  “Come on, asshole.” 

As soon as the door clicked shut, Ronan unceremoniously flung his pants to the floor and yanked Adam to him.  Their mouths crushed together, both of them absolutely shattered with wanting.  His hands wandered up Adam’s shirt, traveling along his ribs.  Adam slowly backed them up to the bed and disconnected their mouths when he felt the mattress bump his legs.  He tugged his shirt over his head and collapsed backward. 

Shuffling across the bed, he repositioned himself near the wall.  His analytical side reasoned that he was least likely to aggravate Ronan’s injuries in the heat of the moment if Ronan was perched in his lap, ostensibly in control and able to pull away if he needed to.  Ronan eagerly followed him, edging close and positioning a knee to either side of Adam’s thighs.  But he stopped short of crawling back into his lap, looking uncharacteristically unsure.  Adam sighed impatiently, reached a hand to each of Ronan’s hips, and jerked him forward, welcoming him with a thrust of his own.  The sound that escaped Ronan was its own reward. 

Their mouths met again as hands roamed.  Ronan gripped both sides of his face, angling his kisses deeply.  Adam’s hands trailed up Ronan’s back, down his sides, up his chest.  Dipped back down to his stomach, looped around in a gentle circle ending with the fingers of one hand creeping under the band of Ronan’s boxers, the other steadying a thigh.  Ronan was trembling.  Adam’s fingers dragged down the skin of his pelvis, pushing through the trail of hair he had glimpsed frequently enough with Ronan’s penchant for shirtlessness.  It was just there, attracting his notice, constantly peeking above the line of Ronan’s boxers to tease him.  Before Adam had even touched him, Ronan’s teeth were lightly sinking into his lip.  It was a wholly accidental movement, one he found intolerably sexy.  Ronan, so lost in feeling that he unthinkingly bit Adam’s lip as they kissed.

Adam’s hand wrapped around Ronan.  Ronan stopped trying to kiss him, instead putting the effort toward attempting to breathe.  He rested his forehead against Adam’s, and the sounds that escaped him were almost whimpers.  Warm breaths mingled in the small space between them.  Adam’s other hand roamed up his back.  As Adam gently stroked him, his mind raced.  The primary sentiment was inappropriate, but it was there all the same.  He felt — powerful.  Ronan Lynch was so untouchable, so unknowable, so savagely handsome and harsh and mysterious and sharp and impossible.  But here he was, quivering against Adam, a shivering bundle of desire.  So completely and thoroughly wrecked at the touch of his skin, mouth, and hands.  Adam had done that.  Adam Parrish, who had felt so powerless and inadequate for the first seventeen years of his life.  Ronan loved him, pure and wholehearted.  Ronan wanted him, keen and fierce.  He was so utterly consumed with his love for this difficult, devastating boy.

“Fuck,” Ronan breathed, regaining his voice and either his confidence or his determination to please Adam.  He began to grind himself against his hand, which had the added benefit of creating a fantastic amount of friction against Adam’s groin.  Adam, sure that Ronan had realized this, bet it was the latter.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, his head slumping back against the wall.  Ronan’s hands dropped to give himself more leverage.  Adam groaned loudly.  Ronan’s breaths were short pants against his good ear.  Adam thought that if he could hear them in that context – in pleasure, instead of pain – often enough, perhaps they would no longer plague his nightmares.  He was more than willing to give the theory a try.

Adam shoved his tongue into Ronan’s mouth.  He tried to show him, tried to press the words he was thinking but struggling to vocalize into him with enough force that he could feel them, too.  _This is what I want.  I want you.  You are enough.  I will not leave this behind.  I love you._

The bright light of early morning cast itself across Adam’s eyelids.  He reluctantly allowed them to open and was rewarded with a glorious sight.  The last time Adam had woken up on an idle Saturday at the Lynch home had been wonderful, at least at first.  He had been true to himself, had realized and revealed his feelings, and had spent the better part of the evening making out with Ronan before retiring to Declan’s bedroom, sleepy and satisfied.  This blew that out of the water.  This time he had woken in Ronan’s bed and said bed contained one Ronan Lynch, messily entangled with Adam.  Knees were trapped between thighs trapped between thighs.  Bodies clad in only boxers.  Adam’s hand rested on the bare skin of Ronan’s chest.  The moment felt infinite.

It was as quiet as he remembered it, nearly silent but for the distant echoes of Chainsaw’s cawing and Opal’s brilliant laughter from outside.  Peaceful.  Still.  Ronan slept soundly beside him.  Adam took the opportunity to admire him.  Ronan remained sharp even without awareness to shape his features into a warning.  Compared to his usual expressions, he looked downright peaceful.  Though not a soul who didn’t know Ronan would ever use that word to describe him.  His thin mouth was objectively cruel, his cheekbones hazardous, his eyebrows a weapon.  His long, elegant eyelashes dipped darkly toward his cheeks.  The shadowy lines of his intricate tattoo crept over his neck and shoulders.  He was unbearably handsome.  It was a savage sort of beauty, but beauty nonetheless.

Ronan just wanted to be known.  How convenient it was, that the pursuit of knowledge was one of Adam’s deepest passions.  He would be glad to learn every last inch of Ronan, inside and out.

Adam slowly trailed his fingers along the length of him, starting at his buzzed hair, moving across his forehead, down his cheek, his jaw.  His neck, which regrettably still displayed the bruised aftermath of a recent strangling.  His collarbone, where new bruises had surfaced, these from Adam’s mouth.  Down his sternum, his chest, and his abdomen, carefully avoiding the bandage wrapped around him.  He rested his hand there when he heard an uneven intake of breath.  Ronan’s eyes were incredibly slow to open, but his lazy smile was almost immediate when he took in his surroundings. 

One of Ronan’s hands moved to cover his own before he lifted it and brought it to his mouth.  Adam’s eyes slipped closed.  He felt Ronan kissing his curled fingers, his hot breath working its way over to his thumb.  He wetly pressed that thumb between his lips twice before he drew the length of it into his mouth.  Adam shivered out a gasp.  Ronan’s tongue curled around him and pulled.  The unexpected suction tugged at parts of Adam much deeper than his hand.  The pressure, the warmth, the wet glide of Ronan’s tongue — more explicit images crashed through Adam’s brain.  He decided that Ronan was very skilled at driving his train of thought straight into the gutter.  Involuntarily, he pressed closer to Ronan and let out a wretched sound.  Ronan ever-so-slowly released his thumb, and Adam ran it along his bottom lip.  He felt it curl into a smirk.

Adam’s eyes opened and found Ronan staring at him intently.  He softly ran his lip against Adam’s thumb.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Adam let his hand trail up to Ronan’s cheek.  The look in Ronan’s blue eyes was radiant — happiness, contentment, satisfaction, love.  Adam shifted, keeping their legs entangled, but moving closer to and over Ronan to cage him in a searing kiss.  Ronan eagerly returned it, back arching off the mattress, hip bones pressing into Adam’s.

Adam’s mind whirled.  _Yes_ , he thought, _this_.  This was what he wanted.  He wanted to be able to wake up in a quiet place with Ronan in his bed.  He wanted the warmth, the skin against skin, the soft feel of Ronan’s mouth against his to be the first sensations of the morning.  He wanted to continue to drown in the depths of this love.  He would do whatever he had to do to keep this.  He would not let it slip away.

Ronan intentionally slowed the pace of their kissing to a gentle halt and disentangled himself from Adam before things could get too heated again.  Adam immediately missed the fire of him underneath him. 

Adam flopped onto his back with a helpless groan.  He was so gone for this boy.  How would they ever make it through the long weeks between breaks?

A low _oof_ escaped him, brought about by Ronan tossing something at his stomach.  Adam glanced down to find a sleek smartphone resting against his skin.  Understanding was a bright ray lancing his heart with joy.  A luminous smile stretched wide across his face.

The grin that twisted Ronan’s lips could have blocked out the sun.

“Rise and shine, Parrish.  We’ve got some cows to wake.”

 

 

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking through to the end! I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> Whew, I finally finished a fic for the first time _ever_. Any and all comments are read and highly appreciated :)

**Author's Note:**

> Titles/Lyrics from: Imagine Dragons, Sleeping at Last, Florence + The Machine, The Hope Arsenal, Grayshot, and Of Monsters and Men.


End file.
